Interesting analysis of the Costa Concordia Grounding

[Bruce Moore]

I have been following the Costa Concrodia grounding with considerable interest (and sadness). I'm guessing many of you have, too.

James Hamilton lives aboard his Nordhavn 5263 with his wife Jennifer, here in Seattle. They cruise extensively, and author books, articles, and blogs about their cruising experiences. James is also an engineer specializing in high-scale data center design and operation, hardware and software, and systems, design and optimization, power efficiency and management, etc.

As he says, "I often study engineering disasters and accidents in the belief that understanding mistakes, failures, and accidents deeply is a much lower cost way of learning." Which, along with being a boater, is why he gathered data about the grounding. He posted his observations to both his technical blog and his boating blog. Very interesting:

His closing observation resonates with me, as a relatively inexperienced boater.

"What I take away from the data points presented here is that experience, ironically, can be our biggest enemy. As we get increasingly proficient at a task, we often stop paying as much attention. And, with less dedicated focus on a task, over time, we run the risk of a crucial mistake that we probably wouldn’t have made when we were effectively less experienced and perhaps less skilled. There is danger in becoming comfortable."

Very interesting: Studying the Costa Concordia Grounding

Cheers,

Bruce

 

[Levitation]

The vessel's master was slopping down wine and showing off in front of some young chick who wasn't even on the manifest...
No amount of analyzing will provide useable data - except for one item, "Don't DO That"